Soul Sacrifice Demo Impressions

Soul Sacrifice has to be one of the biggest releases for the PS Vita and the system defiantly needs it. Sony has released an absolutely massive demo to get Vita owners ready for the game releasing at the end of April for North America and early May for Europe. This demo gives you more than a small slice of the game and instead gives you everything you would do in the begging of the game along with a few missions to test your strength.

As an added plus, all of your progress in this demo transfers over when the game releases. This is a lifesaver, since it is very easy to spend at least 3-5 hours in this free demo. The basic story of Soul Sacrifice places you as a slave to a powerful sorcerer. You find a mysterious book that talks to you and speaks of a way for you to get out of you predicament.

You can read through the book, but also alter certain aspects of the story told in the book. The aspects you can change are not to the story, but are your powers and what your character looks like. As you read through this mysterious book you learn the tragic tale of this mysterious sorcerer. The demo lets you experience your first couple of missions with a partner who is the opposite of what you might expect.

Soon you find out that her past has lead her down a very destructive path and you are the closest thing to a friend she has ever had. This story is presented in a very cool living ink style of presentation in between missions. The story about you and your partner is surprisingly touching and without giving away the end of her arc, it is nice to see that Soul Sacrifice is taking it's story very seriously for the type of game that it is.

Soul Sacrifice looks like it is just another Monster Hunter clone and in many ways it is. The main difference is in the decisions you the player makes. Whenever you defeat any creature, you have the choice to save it or sacrifice it. Each option will level up your good or bad level similar to inFAMOUS. Instead of only being good or bad, you level up both at the same time. Saving a creature will give a player more life, while sacrificing will give you more magic, but the chance of losing life in the process.

Like stated earlier, the gameplay feels very similar to Monster Hunter, but instead lets you customize your character with many different options. These are not just cosmetic (even though there are a lot of choices in the looks department) and give you a lot of spells to use. Spells range from changing your arm into a giant weapon for melee attacks, firing magic at long distance, healing, and much more. The options given to you in the demo let you get a good taste of what powers you will unlock later on.

You can only have six spells to use in battle and this is where things get challenging. Keiji Inafune should be given a pat on the back for making an actually new and interesting way to use magic in this action RPG. Instead of relying on MP or some other bar that needs to be full to use a spell, each spell can only be used a certain amount of times. If you over use a spell it will break and is broken until you fix it. This means if you are not careful in battle, you can be left totally useless with no attacks.

The demo even gives you a taste of the game four player co-op similar to Monster Hunter. There is local and online play allowed to complete missions and when you get a full party, missions will take up a lot of time as well as concentration to complete. The co-op works smooth as butter online and off and has a lot of options in terms of setting up lobbies.

The save or sacrifice aspect is also there whenever a fellow teammate falls in battle. This means you can save them to help in battle, or sacrifice them to get an extremely large boost in power to defeat the creatures around you. This will turn the dead player into a ghost that can run around the battle field helping out by sending out power buffs. This really brings a whole new level to trust needed in who you play with online.

I could go on for much longer talking about all the other gameplay aspect, but then there would be nothing for you to experience in the demo. If you could not tell by now the demo for Soul Sacrifice is defiantly worth checking out if you are looking for a good way to keep you busy until the game releases. Feel free to let us know what you thought of the demo if you have played it in the comments below.